The story for Carolina lartely has been the team playing well at even strength but the powerplay stumbling and costing them the game. In tonight's 4-2 loss against the Penguins, it was a different story. Carolina came out strong and outplayed Pittsburgh for the first 20 minutes but couldn't score. Then the Pens woke up and Carolina was outchanced 18-6 at even strength for the last two periods and ended up taking the loss. It could have been a lot worse had it not been for the powerplay which generated 8 total chances, scored a goal and could have had at least one more. The Canes were given a 5-on-3 (eventually 6-on-3 w/ Boucher pulled) late in the game and could have tied the game there but the bounces weren't going their way. Jussi Jokinen had an open net to shoot at with 17 seconds left but, unfortunately, the shot went right off the post and goaltender Brent Johnson was able to cover it before anyone could get to the rebound. That's just the way things were going.

It would have been nice for the Canes to get at least a point out of this one but they were only the better team for 20 minutes tonight. If their effort from the first period carried over for the rest of the game then maybe they wouldn't have needed a six-on-three powerplay to help them try to tie things up. That's just the way things go when you're one of the worst teams in the league playing against one of the best.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Tonight's game is why you hear so many coaches say that they are more concerned with generating scoring chances instead of shots on net. The Hurricanes were outplayed for most of this game by the eye-test but outshot the Rangers 31-27 according to the game report. How many of those 31 shots were scoring chances, though? Nine. Yep, that's it. The Canes did have the upper hand in shots but most of them came from the outside and Martin Biron didn't need to do much to stop them. That or the official scorer at RBC Center was trigger-happy with the "home team shot on goal" button.

I wouldn't say that the Canes played awful last night but this definitely wasn't one of their better performances. They were able to score early but failed to do anything with their leads and either took silly penalties or tried to make Cam Ward do most of the work. Neither a good recipe for success when you're a team in a rut like Carolina is right now. It wasn't a complete meltdown like the last time we played the Rangers and the Canes had a couple bounces that didn't go their way, but I was expecting a better showing than this.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Now that I've got the retrospect out of the way, we can go forward and look at the team's scoring chance numbers through two months of play. This will be a little different from what I did last month as I'm going to be looking at a few different things, one of which being adjusted scoring chance information. One of the biggest issues with scoring chances is that there hasn't been a way to adjust the data for zone starts like there is with corsi, and this is a way of doing it. The method was drawn up by New Your Ranger blogger George Ays who determined that one offensive zone start is equal to .45 in scoring chances. Using the formula drawn up by JLikens for corsi, we can apply this to scoring chances to get a better idea of how the Canes players are performing relative to their zone starts.

A team like Carolina is in huge need of context with this data because of how buried players like Bryan Allen, Brandon Sutter, Patrick Dwyer and Tim Gleason have been all season when it comes to where they start most of their shifts. There's a good chance that their raw numbers are going to look ugly no matter what so adding some context will help judge their performance more evenly. It also has the opposite effect where we can see if a sheltered player (*cough*Kaberle*cough*) is taking advantage of his cushy zone starts or doing nothing with them.

We'll cut into the details after the jump.

This may have been Carolina's fourth straight loss but it was also a game where the Hurricanes were the better team. Florida was outchanced 17-13 for the entire game and virtually had no life in the first period but the Canes did not make them pay for it. Once again, some of the blame falls on the powerplay failing to create chances when they had plenty of opportunities (five this time) along with Jose Theodore playing a great game in net for the Cats. It's not the best way to bring in a new coach but I think Kirk Muller could go into the locker room and safely say that his team outplayed the opposition and the wins should come if they can keep outchancing their opponents. He's got a lot of work to do when it comes to fixing the powerplay, though.

Scoring chances & more after the jump.

Some of the most frustrating losses come when you outplay an opponent for most of the game. That's what happened last night in Ottawa with the Canes controlling most of last night's game against the Senators. Unfortunately, the team dug themselves into a hole early with a defensive breakdown that led to a goal by Jason Spezza and had to play from behind for most of the game. Even with the assistance of 8 powerplays and 9 scoring chances generated with the man advantage, they ended up taking home their third straight loss. This isn't the best game to judge the powerplay on because while they did generate nine chances, the Canes spent nearly 1/4 of the game 5-on-4 and only scored once. Ottawa's goalie Craig Anderson deserves a lot of credit for his 34 save performance but the team was getting basically one chance per two minute powerplay. Ottawa was able to score on their first powerplay and on the tail-end of their third, so that didn't help either.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

This is coming a few days late because of Thanksgiving throwing off my schedule but I wanted to get the chances posted for this game and I have a few things I want to discuss, too.

There are some who say that the two goal lead is the most dangerous in hockey because it's when teams begin to settle back and play conservative instead of building on a lead. That's what happened to the Hurricanes on Wednesday night. They scored less than 40 seconds into the game on an innocent looking shot from Jiri Tlusty from way past the face-off circle and continued to feed off that lucky bounce by capitalizing on the first scoring chance of the game with a goal by Anthony Stewart (which came six minutes into the game). After that, the Canes did next to nothing to generate pressure in the offenisve zone but it seemed like they would make it out alive because Montreal looked very off that night and couldn't forecheck for most of the first period. Then everything went wrong. The powerplay was lifeless and gave up a shorthanded goal, Montreal tied the game on a tipped-in point shot and Carolina could only seem to create chances in the 3rd period when the game was 3-3. Carolina went on to lose in a shootout for the second time this year and only take home one point in the standings in this game despite a strong showing in overtime. You could say that Carolina didn't deserve the two points but Montreal didn't exactly put together a good showing either.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

One of the reasons why I decided to join the scoring chance project is to catch some things that I may have not seen on the ice. For instance, a player might be labeled as the goat because he failed to tie up a forward in front of the net and it led to the game-winning goal for the opposing team. He may also receive some flack for having the game-tying goal on his stick with less than a minute left and then blowing it by completely missing an open net. Yep, that player should have a seat reserved for him in the press box next game solely because of that. Let's forget the fact that he played more even strength minutes than any other defenseman, was on-ice for more of Carolina's chances and played a solid game overall aside from those two horrible mistakes. The blue-liner who I am referring to is obviously Tomas Kaberle and I know that everyone wants his head now. Going by just the highlights, he had a terrible game and looked awful on that Andrew Ladd goal but to call him the goat of this game is just silly.

Let's forget the fact that the Hurricanes had only 11 total chances at even strength, only ONE in the first period, failed to establish any kind of forecheck and had a terrible offensive performance for most of this game. Oh, and the powerplay stunk yet again which revolves around Kaberle but if you're going to blame him for that you have to blame Eric Staal, Derek Joslin, Jamie McBain, Tuomo Ruutu, Jeff Skinner and almost everyone else who had significant powerplay time.

What I'm trying to say here is that picking one player as the scapegoat is generally stupid. Yes, it's fun to blame one player for all the team's problems but in a loss like this, it's usually the entire team that is struggling. That wasn't completely the case tonight as the Canes had their standouts but for the most part, there wasn't much to be happy about.

Scoring chances and more after the jump

The Hurricanes have not seen a lot of bounces go their way this season which is why last night's game against the Philadelphia Flyers was a nice change of pace for this team. All season long they've been unlucky with goaltending, shooting and special teams but things finally seemed to go right for them in this game. They were outchanced by six shots at even strength but still managed to come out on top thanks to excellent goaltending from Cam Ward and the powerplay scoring two goals. Yes, you heard that right; the powerplay scored not once, but twice! The best part of it that both goals came relatively early in the powerplay so they were getting things done fast. 

If you recall, I have made points saying that the Canes were in the top-half of the league in shots per 60 minutes on the powerplay, which means that they couldn't be stuck on an 11% powerplay conversion rate forever. Over the last few games, I lost confidence because the team wasn't producing chances with the man advantage and figured their shot rate would decline with it. Then this game happened and they scored two quick goals, one of which came with the score tied. Those goals proved to be huge as they were arguably the main reason the Hurricanes left Philly with two points.

More after the jump

Despite losing three in a row and five of their last six, there were good vibes all around the RBC Center tonight as the Hurricanes defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-2. You would think that Carolina woudl have struggled in this game given the current state of their team and the Leafs 7-1 thrashing of the Washington Capitals the night before. Desipte that, the Leafs are a team who are dressing at least three AHL-level forwards right now, one AHL defenseman and were starting their third string goalie. They were also playing their second night of a back-to-back on the road, which usually doesn't bode well no matter who you are.

When you consider all of those points, the outcome of tonight's game shouldn't surprise too many people. The Leafs looked tired for most of the night and were outchanded 24-13 overall and only had five chances in the first two periods combined. The one thing that kept them in the game the whole time was goalie Ben Scrivens, who was really the only factor that prevented this game from being at least 4-0 before the end of the second period. Despite a third period surge from the Leafs, the Canes got the job done and it was backed by one of the strongest performances we've seen from the "top line" this year.

"My goal for the game: outshoot the opponent. Even if we don't win, I want to turn the game off knowing that this team tried and put forth a great effort. I sure as hell didn't have that feeling last game."- Me in yesterday's game preview

I really need to be careful what I wish for. The Canes outshot, outchanced and outplayed the Buffalo Sabres for a good portion of last night's game but they ended up losing 1-0 and haven't scored a goal in almost seven periods. It's rough times but I didn't think Carolina played that bad of a game last night and could have won had a few bounces gone their way. I also thought that the team could have done a better job at getting traffic in front of Buffalo goalie Jhonas Enroth. The team was generating chances, but Enroth saw most of them the entire way and that was a big factor.

Scoring chances & more after the jump